This is what I have for my rough draft so far. Please note a few things. It is EXCESSIVELY long and significant chunks will need to be cut out, so you could do me a favor and point out what needs to be saved that would be appreciated. The final version will hopefully include more sources, more quotes from the primary texts, an introduction and conclusion, and less verboseness. I will also change the emphasis on ambition to something like vice or hypocrisy because in reading I've done recently I have discovered that ambition is not strictly a motivator. I will post an updated bibliography later.
[Title To Be Determined]
Thesis:
Shakespeare
recreates the trauma of the Tudor dynasty in his plays to demonstrate
that it is not illegitimacy that corrupts a person's character but
ambition, and that legitimacy does not make a person good but virtue.
Part
I: An Echo of the Tudors
Scholars, writers, and ordinary people alike have always been
fascinated by the tumultuous events of the Tudor dynasty. “From
Shakespeare’s day to today, we have been obsessed with the Tudor
period: the colourful lives of the monarchs, the complex rises and
falls of both the servants of the crown and the nobility, the fact
that ordinary people could make their way into the highest offices of
the kingdom” (Morris). We are fascinated, perhaps, by the idea that
the people who lived during those times have something to say to us,
particularly the renowned playwright William Shakespeare who lived
during the closing years of the reign of Elizabeth I, the last of the
Tudors, and during the first years of the reign of her successor
James I, and received the patronage of both. Those who observe the
historical record closely understand that much of the turmoil during
the reign of Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII, and the strained family
relations of his children have to do with Henry's quest for a
legitimate heir. Consequently, his daughters Elizabeth and Mary both
struggled to obtain legitimacy in one way or another during their
lifetimes in order to secure their claims to the throne. The search
for personal legitimacy was the driving force behind the lives of the
Tudor monarchs. Shakespeare's
plays contain echoes of the traumatic events and chaotic
personalities of the Tudor dynasty that suggest that he is recreating
the world of the Tudors
in his plays to address
how the issue of legitimacy affected them. For
this paper, I will consider the plays Richard
III, King Lear, and
King John,
as they are thematically the most relevant to the issue of legitimacy
in Tudor times.
Shakespeare's
play Richard
III is traditionally
considered heavily embedded with Tudor propaganda, as it is depiction
of the fall of the House of York as it lead to the rise of the Tudor
dynasty. However, it is also a thematic treatise on the legitimacy of
the Tudors themselves. In his paper “Shakespeare's King
Richard III and the
Problematics of Tudor Bastardy” Maurice Hunt claims that it is also
an open discussion of the questions of legitimacy surrounding Henry
VIII's heirs, revealing“the emergence of a paradigm of
illegitimate legitimacy (or legitimate illegitimacy), a composite
reproduced in the discourse on royal bastardy in King Richard
III.” Richard III meets my criteria for analysis because
it depicts the overturn of true legitimacy by an usurper because of
how he smears the legitimacy of others, and how this overturn is
reversed.
The
play King John is considered an anomaly among Shakespeare's
history plays, but it has a very frightening similarity to the Tudors
in that it depicts the struggle for the English throne between
members of a single family. Scholar Robert Lane points out that
“Indeed, it is more than plausible that Shakespeare chose King
John's reign because its legitimacy--the fundamental focus of the
play--turned on strikingly similar issues (Lane). During the Tudor
dynasty as in times before as depicted by Shakespeare, the throne of
England was a highly coveted prize, but whoever wanted to claim it
had to prove they had more legitimate credentials—such as birth and
religious creed—than their oppnents. However, most of the
contenders in both instances are very closely related. One would
think that since these people are so closely related they would treat
each other with love, but the desire for power has overpowered all of
these affections. Shakespeare's depiction of this medieval royal
family applies to the Tudors in that the struggle for monarchy and
the legitimacy to secure it is a matter of life and death as well as
war and peace.
While both of these plays have
been demonstrated by Hunt and Lane to be thematically relevant, King
Lear also includes a thematic
discourse on issues of division within a royal family as well
as on legitimacy itself. It is the subplot of the Earl of Glouchester
and the division between his sons which merits critical attention
because of how the illegitimate Edmund questions and changes his own
legitimacy. There are parallels to the Tudor family in King Lear
such that legitimacy is a label applied by others, individuals of
questionable seek to change in themselves and others, and that false
legitimacy is self-destructive while true legitimacy has nothing to
do with birth. The struggle for legitimacy in Shakespeare's plays,
therefore, is Shakespeare's commentary on how the monarchs of his day
struggled with theirs.
Part
II: what is legitimacy?
In his first soliloquy in King
Lear, Edmund
comments, “fine word,--legitimate!” (I,ii). “Legitimate” is
indeed a fine word, expressing an interesting concept of what a
person is and has a right to do, have, and be. The Oxford English
Dictionary lists multiple definitions for the term “legitimate.”
The top definition listed reads, “Of a child: Having the
status of one lawfully begotten; entitled to full filial rights.” A
child is considered legitimate, particularly in Shakespeare's world,
if they are conceived and born to two married parents. However,
legitimate can also be used to mean, “conformable to law or rule,
sanctioned or authorized by law or right.” or, “normal, regular;
conformable to a recognized standard type.” In Shakespeare, we see
the term legitimate being used in its most literal sense in referring
to birth, but the term can also be implied to mean to the second or
third definitions listed here to mean that an individual is
illegitimate in the sense that they are abnormal or they do not meet
some social standard in either their behavior or their character.
Likewise, the legitimacy of individuals in Shakespeare's day,
particularly royalty, could be questioned in more than one sense. For
instance, Queen Elizabeth I was often considered an illegitimate
ruler by her Catholic enemies because she was a practicing
Protestant—therefore, she lacked spiritual legitimacy.
In
both Shakespeare's plays and the Tudor dynasty, legitimacy is not
merely a label associated with birth but a stigma assigned by others.
Regardless
of the marital status of one's parents, legitimacy in both
Shakespeare's plays and in the
Tudor dynasty came with its social and cultural constructs that other
people imposed on individuals. In the case of monarchs and legal
succession, the Tudors either legitimized or bastardized themselves
repeatedly during the sixteenth century. In his paper “Shakespeare's
King Richard III
and the Problematics of Tudor Bastardy,” Maurice Hunt comments that
when Henry VIII's marriage to Katherine of Aragon was nullified,
their daughter Mary—later Queen Mary I—was declared illegitimate.
Elizabeth's mother Anne Boylen was arrested for “purportedly for
having committed adultery with five men,” making it appear that
“Elizabeth was not only a bastard but was most likely not even a
royal bastard.” An “Act of Succession of July 1536 legally
bastardized Elizabeth and Mary”. So
Mary and Elizabeth's legitimacy was not purely a question of their
father's actual marriages to their respective mothers but how he
defined his relationships to these women. The works of Shakespeare
also suggest that legitimacy should not be taken at purely literal
value, either.
For
his analysis of Richard
III, Maurice Hunt
suggests that the character of Richard presents a paradoxical
idea of legitimate illegitimacy, or the state of being legitimate in
one sense while being
illegitimate in another. In the play, Richard is physically deformed
and considers himself “not shaped for sportive tricks” that other
people enjoy, “rudely stamped” by his deformity, “And that so
lamely and unfashionable /That dogs bark at me as I halt by them,”
as if the dogs sensed something unnatural in him. Since it is his
nature to be unnatural, he will go against the order of succession to
the throne and become the king: “I am determined to prove a
villain” (I,i). Maurice Hunt claims that Richard acts not out of a
need for legal legitimacy but a desire for legitimacy of a different
kind.
“Physically twisted,
resembling the shape of neither his mother nor his father, Richard
feels like a bastard, even though he is by all accounts legitimately
born. Self-disgustedly, Richard feels himself to be illegitimately
legitimate (or legitimately illegitimate). Richard's recognition of
legitimate succession could amount to a compensation for his feeling
of being a figurative bastard. Richard protects himself from this
negative emotion by projecting bastardy onto his imagined rivals,
including Edward, his nephews, and the Bretons (including Richmond)”.
To
Richard, his physical impairments are a sign that he is different or
unnatural compared to others that Hunt suggests is in a similar
manner to how people of illegitimate birth feel or are regarded as
unnatural, and Richard regards his need for legitimization to justify
his behavior towards others.
In King John, the issues
of legitimacy are similar. John seems perfectly assured of his right
to sit on the English throne, having succeeded through a will written
by his late brother Richard I. He calls it, “Our strong possession
and our right for us” to defend (I). Robert Lane discusses how this
ties into the Tudor succession controversy, particularly as it
applied towards the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign:\
Henry VIII by his will (also a
death-bed instrument) had contravened primogeniture by
designating the heirs of his younger sister Mary Tudor (the Suffolk
line), rather than those of his older sister Margaret Tudor (the
Stuart line) as the royal bloodline in the event Elizabeth died
childless. [….] The will was challenged on technical grounds as
well as for Henry's mental incapacity and was "for a time
mislaid,"(29) but supporting its validity was the parliamentary
authorization for the instrument' as well as precedent. That
precedent was Richard I's will, giving the succession dispute in King
John a direct relevance to the Elizabethan debate (Lane, emphasis
added).
Notice how Lane describes how
Henry VIII's will had contravened primogeniture, or in other words
disregarded the traditional practice of having the eldest sibling
inherit first. In the case of King John, Richard and John had
an elder deceased brother named Geoffrey who had a son named Arthur
that was disregarded when Richard wrote his will when he technically
had the right to succeed. Arthur's mother, Constance, is aware of
this fact, and has allied herself with Philip, the king of France, to
reclaim her son's title. The fact that primogeniture was disregarded
gives cause for the French Ambassador to openly regard John's regime
as “borrow'd majesty” (I,l. 4). Constance and her French allies
regard John as an unlawful ruler and therefore unnatural or
illegitimate.
In Act II of King John, the
two parties greet each other on a battlefield in France. Constance
and John's mother, Queen Elinor engage in a vicious argument in which
they label each other, and Elinor labels Arthur (in Arthur's
presence, no less), illegitimate. Elinor threatens to produce a will
to bar Arthur's claim to the throne, to which Constance replies, “Ay,
who doubts that? a will! a wicked will: /A woman's will; a canker'd
grandam's will!” Considering that this entire quarrel was started
by a will, it seems that the usage of the word “will” is
significant here. A will can mean a legal document as well as the
power or desire to do something [OED]. The repeated use of “will”
in Constance's statement is an example of several rhetorical devices.
Most notably, diacope is a device in which the repetition of a word
with one or more other words in between adds meaning, drawing
attention back to the word being repeated. Constance is saying that
any will that Elinor would draw up to bar her son's title would be
wicked and evidence that Elinor's will to support John is wicked, and
that she is a wicked old hag. Elinor and Constance's referal to a
will being drawn up is a reference to the English practice of using
legal measures to bar inheritance and legally define an individual's
legitimacy. Maurice Hunt comments that by the time of the Tudors,
“this legislative method for 'proving' (or 'disproving')
legitimacy had transparently become the tool of political
opportunists, often of the crassest stripe” ().
Shakespeare's
presentation of King John was a commentary on the legal
brutality of sixteenth-century European politics: if someone wanted
to steal something, all a person had to do was claim that they person
who had what they wanted was illegitimate.
In King Lear, however,
legitimacy is not merely a matter of political opinion and legal
proceedure but of defining individual worth and character. The play
opens with a dialogue between the Earls of Gloucester and Kent as
Gloucester introduces his illegitimate son Edmund to Kent. Of Edmund,
Gloucester says, “I have so often blushed to acknowledge him, that
now I am brazed to it.” Kent replies, “I cannot conceive you,”
and .Gloucester jests, “Sir, this young fellow's mother could.”
Gloucester turns Kent's use of the term “conceive” into wordplay.
While Kent means to say he cannot conceive or understand how
Gloucester has grown bold about an illegitimate son he used to be
ashamed of, Gloucester says that Edmund's mother, with whom he had
illicit intercourse, was bold enough to conceive a child from their
union. Gloucester adds, “this knave came something saucily into the
world before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair; there was good
sport at his making,”. The term “saucily” means “impudent or
flippant” or sexually suggestive. Gloucester says he enjoyed his
brief affair with Edmund's mother, but it was her fault for getting
pregnant and that Edmund was an unwelcome surprise. Kent remarks, “I
cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it being so proper.” As
Edmund hovers politely in the background, Kent thinks it is a pity
that Edmund is illegitimate, as though if Edmund were legitimate he
would be entitled to Kent's complete rather than partial regard. To
Kent and Gloucester, Edmund's illegitimacy devalues his worth as a
person.
Although he does not say much
in the first scene, it becomes clear in scene ii of King Lear
that Edmund knows exactly what his father and Kent think of him. He
questions why society should devalue him. He says of himself, “my
dimensions are as well compact,/ My mind as generous, and my shape as
true,/ As honest madam's issue.” However, other people refuse to
acknowledge that because of his birth. “Why brand they us /With
base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?” In these last two lines
quoted here, Edmund repeats the words “base” over and over, the
context being that because he was produced from the “base” or
improper union of his father with a woman he was not married to,
Edmund himself is “base” or immoral. Edmund's repetition of the
word “base” shows how much he is concerned about his self-worth,
because other people do not agree that he is as good “As honest
madam's issue.” His motive for his behavior towards his father and
legitimate half-brother, then, is to make them and the other
characters see that he is just as good and reaffirm how he defines
himself. To Edgar, legitimacy is only a label.
Edmund's concern about his
legitimacy is a reflection of how people in the sixteenth-century
were concerned about the legitimacy of their monarchs for this
reason. Hunt writes, that although “Henry [VIII] stubbornly
insisted that Mary was a bastard and Elizabeth [was legitimate....]
considerable grumbling and protest arose; for many of Henry's
subjects, 'Catherine was still 'the Queen' and Mary 'the Princess.'
Anne was 'the concubine,' and Elizabeth 'the little bastard'' (Ridley
25)” (Hunt). Considering people's views about legitimacy, Henry
VIII's subjects were initially reluctant to accept Elizabeth as his
heir. Perhaps they thought that if
a monarch's child was illegitimate, they were not only legally but
morally unfit to rule because of their natural “base”
character. However, history proves, and Shakespeare concurs, that
birth has nothing to do with the legitimacy needed to rule a country
peacefully.
Part
III: Challenging Legitimacy
Shakespeare characters who
reject their illegitimacy make it their ambition to overcome it, but
such ambition becomes corrupted as individuals betray family ties in
order to steal their legitimacy, in much the same way members of the
Tudor family did the same. Time and again throughout
Shakespeare's plays, Shakespeare's villains are driven by ambition to
destroy people who are good and seize power for themselves. In the
cases of Richard in Richard III and Edmund in King Lear, their
ambition is fueled by a knowledge that they are regarded by others as
unnatural and base in character because of some form or another of
illegitimacy and a desire to change that perception. The innocent
victims who stand in their way are blood relatives whose legitimacy
is more accepted than their own. This villainous behavior is a
reflection of the relationships between members of the Tudor family
who challenged each other for the right to the throne on the basis of
their individual legitimacy.
Henry VIII's eldest child,
Queen Mary I, was the daughter of the ill-fated Katherine of Aragon
who was divorced in favor of Anne Boylen and then sent into exile
where she died. Mary was separated from her mother during her
mother's final years, and her relationship with her father was
distant. “Mary
Tudor remained an official bastard throughout much of Henry VIII's
and all of Edward VI's reigns[....]Mary was usually kept during her
father's lifetime far from court, forced to follow with less pomp
Elizabeth and Edward in royal processions” (Hunt). Undoubtedly,
memories of Anne Boylen's cruelty towards her and her mother as well
as jealousy poisoned her relationship with her half-sister Elizabeth.
During her reign, she imprisoned Elizabeth in the Tower of London and
later banished her to remote country estates. Mary also reversed her
own legitimacy status. “[T]he new queen proclaimed in October 1553
that she was the legitimate daughter of Henry's lawful marriage to
Katharine of Aragon” and had Parliament authorize it (Hunt). Being
a practicing Catholic, the move was not only to make herself a legal
monarch but to ensure that she was spiritually and morally able to
rule in her eyes and in the eyes of her subjects. By making
Parliament acknowledge her legitimacy and banishing Elizabeth, Mary
disassociated herself from the trauma of her past—erasing it as
much as possible—taking control of her life and securing her claim
to the throne.
In Shakespeare's plays we see
similar behavior towards relatives being practiced by people who are
driven by ambition to fulfill a similar need to Mary's—to legalize
and publicize their legitimacy. In Richard III, Richard and
his accomplice Buckingham go out in public to inform their subjects
that Richard's deceased brother Edward and Edward's sons are unfit to
rule, and they do this by attacking their legitimacy. Richard tells
Buckingham to hint at Edward's “hateful luxury /And bestial
appetite in change of lust” that led him to have carnal relations
with a multitude of women, therefore disqualifying the legitimacy of
his two sons (). At a later assembly, Buckingham dramatically tells
Richard, “it is your fault that you resign /The supreme seat, the
throne majestical, [….] To the corruption of a blemished stock”
and he must become king to preserve the legal as well as moral
integrity of the throne. Maurice Hunt comments that Richard's
reference to Edward IV's sexual behavior are a clear reference to
Henry VIII's “notoriously roving eye.” Hunt remarks that “It
was Henry VIII's "bastardizing" lust that partly made both
Mary and Elizabeth illegitimate as subsequent "marriages"
blighted the girls' mothers and their origins (Hunt). Hunt clarifies
what Richard is doing by his accusation of his brother: if a man is
having too many sexual relationships at once, then it is hard to tell
which children are lawfully his and which are not, and it is too easy
to find evidence that puts their legitimacy to question. Furthermore,
it explains that Shakespeare is clearly recreating the traumatic
family life of the Tudors in a different context to show how
vulnerable people with such a trouble background, such as Mary and
Elizabeth Tudor, are to accusations of illegitimacy and the ambition
of others to remove them.
Richard
III also demonstrates what happens when people become too focused
on the legitimacy status they assign to the people they mean to
destroy. Once he has the approval of the people, Richard orders the
assassination of Edward IV's sons who are at that time imprisoned in
the Tower of London. He summons an assassin, Tyrrel, and informs him
that “two deep enemies, /Foes to my rest and my sweet sleep's
disturbers/Are they that I would have thee deal upon:/ Tyrrel, I mean
those bastards in the Tower” ( ). Richard may likely be referring
to his two nephews as “bastards” to keep in line with his own
story. However, in the rest of the line he refers to them indirectly
as “two deep enemies” and “Foes to my rest” because he is
more concerned about how they threaten his claim to the throne.
Richard is so focused on emphasizing the illegitimacy of his kin that
he has distanced himself from them as a relative, disavowing all
familial ties and obligations, seeking to kill them rather than to
protect them.
Edmund
in King Lear is another
example of how ambition corrupts familial ties. Although he succeeds
in betraying his father and half-brother, takes advantage of Regan
and Goneril's betrayal of Lear, and literally seduces Goneril into
betraying the Duke of Albany, he knows that he is acting against the
moral code of the society he lives in. Edmund convinces his father
Gloucester that his half-brother Edgar is plotting to kill him, and
then he convinces Edgar to run away. Edmund then claims that he
warned the purportedly plotting Edgar that “the revenging gods
/'Gainst parricides did all their thunders bend; /Spoke, with how
manifold and strong a bond /The child was bound to the father”
(II,i). Edmund is taking advantage of the fact that his society has
these expectations for children to respect their parents by claiming
that Edgar has failed in this obligation. In reality, however, it is
Edmund who has betrayed this expectation. As Edgar runs away, Edmund
wounds himself with his sword and states, “Some blood drawn on me
would beget opinion”. Edmund makes it appear that Edgar has wounded
him. In reality, what he is doing is smearing the legitimacy of Edgar
with his own criminal mischief. Edmund's deception produces the
desired effect: Gloucester informs him after Edgar's departure that
“of my land, /Loyal and natural boy, I'll work the means /To make
thee capable”. Notice how Gloucester refers to Edmund's behavior as
“Loyal and natural” even though Edmund clearly knows what he is
doing is unnatural. He proves his legitimacy not by good deeds
but by hypocrisy and betrayal of the natural order.
Elinor
and Constance in King John present an example of how family ties are
betrayed in the quest for legitimacy by how they turn on each other.
Considering that Elinor is Constance's mother-in-law, it is somewhat
reasonable to expect that they would not see eye-to-eye on the issue
of what titles Arthur should be granted, but their treatment towards
each other is reprehensible. In Act I, Elinor tells John that “that
ambitious Constance would not cease /Till she had kindled France and
all the world,/ Upon the right and party of her son”. Elinor knows
and states for a fact that Constance is consumed by her desire for
power and to provide the best for her son rather than to appease the
rest of the family. Elinor gives the opinion that their family
argument “might have been prevented and made whole /With very easy
arguments of love,” but instead the ambition-consumed relatives
must resolve their quarrels through war (). The competition for the
throne has completely destroyed their familial ties and driven them
to neglect their filial obligations.
Constance
and Elinor with their respective allies represent two sides of an
argument that are competing for the throne by tearing down each
other's legitimacy to the point that they no longer claim to be
lawfully related. In Act II, Constance calls John a usurper, and
Elinor calls Arthur a bastard. Constance defends herself by saying
that Arthur was legitimately begotten and that in reality John is a
bastard. Elinor tells Arthur, “There's a good mother, boy, that
blots thy father.” Constance replies:“There's a good grandam,
boy, that would blot thee” ( ) These parallel statements are an
example of a rhetorical device called isocolon, a type of parallelism
made up of statements of similar length (). In each sentence, one
woman attacks the other, referring to her familial title, and says
that she is attacking the legitimacy of both Arthur and his deceased
father, through whom he has his claim to the English throne. The two
women attack each other's marital fidelity, each to insult the
legitimacy of the contestant for the throne they support as well as
to insult each other for supporting the wrong person. Their slander
is representative of the ways in which the legitimacy of the Tudors
was attacked by other leaders in Europe during the sixteenth-century,
and they behave in the same way, as though attacking each other's
legitimacy would allow them to claim legitimacy for themselves. The
reality is, however, that in both Shakespeare and in his world, such
tactics are in reality ineffective.
Part
IV: The Price of Legitimacy
The
ambition shown by Shakespeare characters who seek to secure their
legitimacy are only rewarded with self-destruction, as was often the
case in real life, because their false legitimacy was proven to be
corrupt. Returning to Hunt's
concept of “legitimate illegitimacy/illegitimate legitimacy”,
legitimacy is a label for one type of outward legitimacy that may
have nothing to do with actual legitimacy in another sense. In
Richard III
and King Lear,
both Richard and Edmund have created a false legitimacy for
themselves in order to gain power, thus becoming legitimate in spite
of their outward illegitimacy. In the end, however, they are
destroyed by people whose legitimacy they had slandered in order to
create or maintain this false pretext of legitimacy.
After
becoming king, Richard becomes aware of a quickly growing threat of
invasion from Henry, the earl of Richmond, who is challenging Richard
for his right to the throne. Richmond, who would later become Henry
VII and the founder of the Tudor dynasty, came from a long line of
questionable marriages and connections to the throne. Maurice Hunt
notes that the real Richard was quick to capitalize on Henry's
dubious legitimacy (Hunt). In his speech to his troops before the
battle of Bosworth Field, Richard describes Richmond's army as “A
sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways,/ A scum of Bretons, and
base lackey peasants/[....]You having lands, and blest with beauteous
wives, They would restrain the one, distain the other” ( ). Richard
also refers to them as “these bastard Bretons” ( ). Richard's
slandering of the enemy army is an attack on their legitimacy,
alluding to the perception that “vagabonds, rascals, and runaways,”
“scum” and “lackey peasants” are cowardly, lazy and
poor-quality people. Richard's use of the word “base” and
“bastard” to describe them also lists them as literally and
morally illegitimate, and purporting the idea that they will ravish
their wives characterizes them as immoral. Hunt notes that as well
as this being typical of Richard projecting illegitimacy on his
enemies to hide the inadequacy of his physical illegitimacy, he is
also attacking Richmond's legitimacy: “The bastard Bretons,
if triumphant, will spread their bastardy by lathering illegitimate
children on the losers' wives. In this conception, politically
illegitimate Henry Tudor becomes the wellspring of bastardy in its
most basic sense” ( ).
Richard's attack on the literal and moral legitimacy of Richmond's
army is an attack on Richmond's legitimacy as well.
However,
it is Richard, and not Henry Tudor, who is politically as well as
morally illegitimate in Shakespeare's depiction. Richmond's speech to
his troops alludes to this, as he not only calls Richard “A base
foul stone, made precious by the foil /Of England's chair, where he
is falsely set. ” Hunt states that “In this pejorative context,
the word 'base' catches the overtones of figurative bastardy inherent
in Richard's own dehumanized conduct and his tacit self-appraisals
and condenses them in the mouth of his adversary” ( ). According to
Hunt, then, Henry knows that Richard has not legitimized himself by
his immoral or illegitimate behavior but he has proven his own
illegitimacy. Hunt, however, neglects the additional evidence of
Richard's moral illegitimacy in the following lines, as Henry also
calls him “One that hath ever been God's enemy.” He tells his
soldiers, “Then, if you fight against God's enemy,/ God will in
justice ward you as his soldiers” ( ). Richard, because of his
murderous behavior, has bereft himself of divine favor, and so there
is a divine sanction for Richmond, a man of more questionable literal
legitimacy than Richard's, to overthrow someone of moral
illegitimacy. Richard's attempts to slander Richmond are hence to no
avail.
The
ending of King Lear
also proves to be the destruction of the facade of false legitimacy
that Edmund created for himself at the hands of his legitimate
half-brother Edgar. Through Edgar, the Duke of Albany learns that
his wife Goneril has betrayed him and plans to marry Edmund. Albany
agrees to allow Edgar to defend his claim, and he tells Edmund “If
none appear to prove upon thy head /Thy heinous, manifest, and many
treasons, There is my pledge; I'll prove it on thy heart” ( ). Like
Richmond, Albany resolves to allow divine justice to prove whether or
not Edmund's false legitimacy will hold up against a trial by combat.
Edmund is insulted that Albany is questioning his self-made image,
saying “what in the world he is/ That names me traitor,
villain-like he lies. He dares Albany, saying, “Call by thy
trumpet: he that dares approach,/ On him, on you, who not? I will
maintain/ My truth and honour firmly” ( ). Edmund here declares
that he is a man of “truth and honor” even though, as I have
already demonstrated, his actions have been anything but based in
these principles. The challenger is none other than Edgar, Edmund's
half-brother whose legitimacy he stole and good reputation he framed.
He states, “Know, my name is lost;/ By treason's tooth bare-gnawn
and canker-bit:/ Yet am I noble as the adversary/ I come to cope” (
). By having his legitimacy stolen, Edgar also had his identity taken
from him, but he knows the truth of Edmund's treachery as well as the
truth of his own legitimacy. Just like Edmund and Albany, Edgar puts
his trust in the practice of a trial-by-arms to publish these truths.
“This sword, this arm, and my best spirits, are bent /To prove upon
thy heart, whereto I speak, /Thou liest” ( ). The two brothers
fight, and Edmund falls. Edgar reveals his identity by saying, “I
am no less in blood than thou art, Edmund; /If more, the more thou
hast wrong'd me” ( ). They are equals in the sense that they have
the same father, but Edgar is “more” because of his legitimacy,
therefore Edmund is more wicked because he “wrong'd” Edgar by
stealing Edgar's legitimacy, his good reputation, and their father's
love. In reference to their father's affair that led to Edmund's
birth in the first place, Edgar says, “The gods are just, and of
our pleasant vices /Make instruments to plague us,” but this could
also be a reference to the price of Edmund's “vices” as well:
Edmund, in wronging Edmund, Gloucester, and Albany, has now lost his
life. Edgar is also referring to the fact that through his immoral
behavior Edmund has paid the penalty of divine justice for his
crimes. Edmund stealing his half-brother's legitimacy did not make
any change to his own but made himself morally illegitimate on top of
being literally illegitimate.
In
the history of the Tudor family, divine justice against legitimately
illegitimate rulers manifested itself not in armed combat but in the
ability to perpetuate one's legitimacy. During her reign, Queen Mary
I married and attempted to produce an heir in order to prevent
Elizabeth, the half-sister she viewed as illegitimate, from
inheriting the throne, but instead she lost her own vitality. After
her marriage to her cousin Philip (later King Philip II of Spain),
she had two false “pregnancies” in which her womb appeared to
swell. However, they were not really pregnancies at all. The reality
was that Philip disliked Mary and was hardly ever in England, and in
fact he had affairs with other women while he was gone. The second
time it happened, modern experts inform us, it was ovarian cancer, a
literal smiting of her “organs of increase” ( ). Mary's reign,
furthermore, was blighted not only by persecution of Protestants but
crop failure and famine. Her subjects may very well have come to
believe that the literal and figurative lack of increase to Mary's
rule was a sign of divine disfavor and a mark of her illegitimacy as
a ruler. After her death, Mary would be regarded as a legitimately
illegitmate ruler because she was trying to force Catholicism back on
an England that had rejected it during the rule of her father and
brother before her. The “bastard” Elizabeth, who was also a
Protestant, was vindicated by her ascension on Mary's death.
Part
V: A different Context for Legitimacy
Since a person's ambition to
prove their legitimacy is a manifestation of corruption, therefore it
is not literal legitimacy that is the foundation of a person's
character but moral legitimacy or virtue.
Literal legitimacy or illegitimacy has no regard for an individual's
character. Hunt remarks that although Mary I did much to legitimize
herself, her sister Elizabeth I, on the other hand, did not.
“Elizabeth's counselors advised her not to repeal the Act of
1536 which bastardized her, or to proclaim her biological legitimacy”
and claim the right to rule instead on the basis of her father's
will. “In effect, this decision made at the beginning of
Elizabeth's long rule kept her bastardization official throughout her
lifetime” (Hunt). Sow did a
technically “illegitimate” monarch become one of England's
greatest rulers? After her sister's chaotic reign, Elizabeth restored
the Protestant faith, and she defended Protestantism and the security
of her homeland from invasion by the defeat of the Spanish Armada.
These and other measures did much to secure the approval of her
subjects regardless of her illegitimacy, making her, in their eyes,
legitimate. Shakespeare and other writers of the period depicted
Elizabeth as a virtuous ruler. It was not Elizabeth's background that
gave her the right to rule but the wisdom and strength with which she
governed.
Elizabeth I's “illegitimate
legitimacy” was not without historical precedent, and in Richard
III Shakespeare
depicted this dichotomy in the ascension of her grandfather, Henry
VII,
as perfectly valid because of his “virtuous” overthrow of the
morally “illegitimate” Richard. Writes Hunt,“Shakespeare's
creation of a scapegoat figurative bastard in King
Richard III must have
made Richmond's claims nostalgically believable [.... ]the moral
bastardy of "legitimate" Richard and the hypocrites of the
Yorkist court defines the moral integrity of the 'bastard' Henry
Tudor.”
Henry's defeat of Richard
effectively ended the Wars of the Roses, and the Lancastrian Henry
secured this peace by
marrying Elizabeth of York, and in Richard
III Shakespeare also
turns this into an addition to Henry's moral as well as political
legitimacy because he had “rescued” her from the conniving
Richard who had both slandered her and sought after her hand in
marriage. Richard himself had recognized the potential dichotomy of
his suit to Elizabeth, having ordered the assassination of her
younger brothers, but he rationalizes it, saying, “But I am in/ So
far in blood that sin will pluck on sin” ( ). Richard
III's suit of Elizabeth of York, Queen Elizabeth I's grandmother and
mother of the Tudor dynasty,
is depicted as another example of Richard's crimes and his
metaphorical illegitimacy. Henry coming to “rescue” Elizabeth
makes him appear all the more heroic and morally legitimate. Hunt
comments:
Legitimate
Richard's figurative bastardy (or baseness) by contrast makes other
Yorkists and especially Henry Tudor who have been either labeled or
associated with bastardy appear less culpable, even--in the Earl of
Richmond's case--non-blamable. This dramatic strategy provides the
basis for the play's concluding emphasis upon Tudor fertility and
legitimacy.
Hunt concludes his
paper saying that Richard is a model for a metaphorical human
illegitimacy. In Richard III, the demonized predecessor to
Henry Tudor, Richard is depicted as, by nature, a man of illegitimate
virtues, and one of his greatest crimes is to secure his political
and personal legitimacy by bastardizing everyone standing in his way
to the throne. In contrast, the heroic Henry, much like Shakespeare's
patron, Elizabeth I, gains legitimacy not only by being more virtuous
than a figurative bastard but by acting upon it.
In King John, the royal
family's struggle for legitimacy is only resolved as they destroy
each other in warfare, but the illegitimate son of the deceased King
Richard I—known as the Bastard—survives and embraces his
illegitimacy in much the same way as Elizabeth I claimed the right to
rule through her father, whose union with her mother was very
questionable. The Bastard chooses to embrace his illegitimacy because
he has more to gain by it publicly and monetarily. He and his
half-brother Robert enter King John's court to resolve a succession
dispute because, although Robert is younger, he has inherited his
late father Sir Robert Faulconbridge's estate because he is the
legitimate son. Elinor and John recognize Richard's features in the
Bastard's face and claim him as family. The Bastard is pleased with
this change in fortune because although he has separated himself from
the family that raised him and possibly lost his inheritance, being
an illegitimate royal still apparently makes him royalty. Says he to
Elinor's recognition of Richard's features, the Bastard says, “I
would give it every foot to have this face; I would not be sir Nob
[Sir Robert Faulconbridge] in any case” ( ). He tells his mother,
whose affair with Richard I led to his conception, “Ay, my mother,
With all my heart I thank thee for my father! Who lives and dares but
say thou didst not well When I was got, I'll send his soul to hell”
( ). He is in essence telling her that her lack of virtue has done
him a favor by improving his fortunes. While in real life Elizabeth I
downplayed her illegitimate conception and status, here the Bastard
is playing up how this status has, like Elizabeth, rewarded him
because of his royal parentage.
For the Bastard, it is not his
birth that matters but his attitude that makes him who he is. Queen
Elinor calls him “The very spirit of Plantaganet” because of how
he imbibes the noble spirit of his birth father. To this, the Bastard
replies, “have is have, however men do catch:/Near or far off, well
won is still well shot, /And I am I, howe'er I was begot” ( ). The
Bastard understands that no matter what his biological origins are,
he is who he chooses to be. Even though he is the biological son of
Richard I this is an identity he chooses to embrace. The Bastard
knows that it is using one's intelligence and being opportunistic
that secures a person's fortune better than birth: “For he is but a
bastard to the time That doth not smack of observation” ( ). Like
Edmund in King Lear, the Bastard recognizes that the person he
chooses to be has nothing to do with his legitimacy or birth, but
unlike Edmund (or Richard III, for that matter) he does not seek to
legitimize himself, instead he accepts himself for what he is and
makes the most of his illegitimate status.
Shakespeare plays up the
Bastard's embracing of his illegitimacy to heroic (and not to
mention comic) effect. On the battlefield in France, the Bastard
meets the Duke of Austria who killed his father Richard I. When
Austria sees him and asks, “What the devil art thou?” , the
Bastard retorts, “One that will play the devil, sir, with you” (
). The Bastard's constant reference to his father's lion-like
qualities (Richard I was known as “Couer-de-lion” or “the
Lionheart”) makes it obvious that he wants to follow in the
footsteps of his heroic parent. As he is taunting Austria, he says,
“O tremble, for you hear the lion roar.” Ultimately, the Bastard
avenges his father's death, and in a later battle with the French he
is also a heroic leader and described as “valiant” ( ). The
Bastard finds his personal as well as moral legitimacy in serving his
country and destroying the morally illegitimate villains that fight
against England.
[conclusion]
Works
Cited
Burton, Gideon. Silva
Rhetoricae. Brigham
Young University. 9 March 2013. Web.
Hunt, Maurice. "Shakespeare's
King Richard III And The Problematics Of Tudor Bastardy." Papers
On Language & Literature
33.2 (1997): 115. Academic
Search Premier. Web.
6 Mar. 2013.
Lane, Robert. ""the
Sequence of Posterity": Shakespeare's King John and the
Succession Controversy." Studies in Philology 92.4
(1995): 460-. ProQuest Research Library. Web. 7 Mar. 2013.
Morris, Sylvia. “Hillary
Mantel and Shakespeare: two tales of Henry VIII.” The
Shakespeare Blog. 15 January 2013. Web.
Shakespeare, William. The
Complete Works of Shakespeare. Latus ePublishing. Kindle Edition.
Oxford
English Dictionary. Web. 16 March 2013.
New
Oxford American Dictionary.
